Relating, Creating, Transforming

Posts tagged ‘friend’

If you haven’t seen the Netflix original show Stranger Things, I highly recommend it. I won’t give a full synopsis here, but even if you are not familiar with it, I think what follows will still be relevant and hopefully meaningful.

Let’s talk about friendship.

In Stranger Things, friendship takes center stage. It is set in 1983 in a small town in Indiana and follows the lives of Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will, and El, 12-year old kids. Mike, Dustin, Will, and Lucas have been friends since early childhood and they have their own club with secrets, pacts, etc. Something shakes them to their core, however, when one of their group, Will Byers, gets trapped in what’s called the Upside Down, an alternative dimension. The whole town of Hawkins starts the search, but to no avail. Everyone fears the worst, including his closest friends.

And then, a mysterious girl shows up. She is first called “Eleven” because of the number tattooed on her wrist. Mike eventually calls her El and despite the suspicions of Dustin and Lucas, El becomes part of their friendship club. It is El’s unsettling arrival into the lives of the three boys that is the catalyst for the writers of Stranger Things to define what the story is all about—friendship, and to define what that means in this tale.

We first get a glimpse in a scene with the three boys [minus the missing Will] and El, in the basement of Mike’s house one day after school. Lucas is upset that Mike hasn’t told his mom about El–that she’s living in his basement and probably has escaped from somewhere bad. Mike refuses to tell and so Lucas decides to take matters into his own hands. He opens the door to go upstairs to tell Mike’s mom. But the door slams shut by itself. Lucas tries again. It slams shut again. Then, the boys look at El.

Her stare could cut through solid steel. Her nose is bleeding. All she says is: NO. It’s the first time that the boys recognize El’s mysterious powers and what she can move with her mind. They are in awe of her, afraid even.

“We never would have upset you if we knew you had superpowers.”

Dustin is really honest. And though they all seem to fear El at this moment, their fear doesn’t prevent them from seeking to form a bond of friendship with her.

“A friend is someone you’d do anything for…friends tell each other things. And… A promise is something you can’t break — ever. A friend is someone that you’d do anything for … and they never break a promise … that’s super important because friends tell each other things; things that parents don’t know. Friends tell each other the truth. And they definitely don’t lie to each other…”

This definition of friendship drives the story of Stranger Things. After all, El is someone who has no experience with trust. On the surface, Mike’s very dogmatic definition of a friend is very twelve-year-old cut-and-dry. But if we look closer, the friendship of this group of kids is really based on trust, reconciliation and self-sacrifice for the sake of love. This idea is demonstrated again and again, like when Will first goes missing and all the boys’ parents tell them it’s too dangerous to join the search party, but of course they go and look anyway. When El tells them that the Upside Down contains a monster, they still pull out their compasses to try to find the portal to that world.

I think much of the appeal of Stranger Things is the friendship theme. After all, we too long for honest, loving friendships with others. If we can say that we have only 1-2 friends like that well, then we are lucky, no? And I also think it’s a story worth telling and embracing during this season and any season for that matter, because friendship of this quality leads to acceptance and inner and outer peace. Friendship of this level, just like in Stranger Things, can be salvific, resurrecting, healing.

For Christians, the season of Advent is mean to be a time of deep reflection, service to others, and development of spiritual practices. The Scriptures people read tend to be Hebrew prophets like Isaiah, authors who paint a pretty bleak picture of humanity that is full of war, corruption, greed, and fear.

Tucked within that negative narrative, however, is the belief that light breaks through it all—that we and this world are meant to be so much more.

That there are voices crying out in the wilderness telling us to prepare a way of peace and reconciliation—a way forward in the middle of an endless desert. Thus, while the world around us and the people filling the earth can often cause us to fear or to isolate ourselves, we can count on one thing being constant. The Creator God of Isaiah is mighty and powerful, shaping the beauty and majesty of the natural world. And yet, this God/Elohim is also a gentle friend to humanity. The prophet flips the world upside down as the valleys are lifted up and the mountains made low. The uneven ground is leveled, and the rough places are made plain. This is God’s doing and all of humanity sees it together.

Like the kids in Stranger Things who fear El’s mighty powers, we too can come to fear this Divine Elohim. But if we look closer, we can soon realize that fear is not what our relationship should be built on. No, in a world that is dangerous and alienating enough we long for connections that build peace and trust–including any relationship we have with the Divine. Some of us feel like outcasts, strangers, or someone on the outside looking in. We seek belonging and people who we can trust. Thus, finding a true friend can mean that we find a home or a family. Discovering friends who form bonds with us of acceptance and understanding, who are willing to recognize our suffering and share our love, make life worth living.

El was not to be feared, but loved and accepted. So too are we made to seek out friendships with others who choose to hear us, who encourage us to fully be ourselves, who love us as we are.

Friendship of this kind can move us towards peace. It’s not easy, to be sure, and peace does not mean the absence of conflict. In the Judeo-Christian scriptural tradition, peace is shalom, and this means “universal flourishing, wholeness and delight…a rich state in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed…a state that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in. Shalom is the way things ought to be.” [1]

So kudos to the friends in Stranger Things. May we learn from them. May friendship open doors for you and welcome you in. May bonds of love and acceptance drive you forward. Make shalom reality.

Before we start, a few things to keep in mind: the writer of Acts was the writer of Luke’s Gospel. Simply put, there are many purposes that the author of Luke and Acts could have had while writing. First, it was the 2nd century. Jesus was dead. The Roman Empire saw the followers of Jesus as a threat. Also, it was confusing. How was it that a Jewish Rabbi had attracted so many Gentile followers? Many see both Luke and Act as an apologetic writing—one that tries to make the case that Jesus’ message was for the Jews but was also accepted by the Gentiles. And there are even some who argue that these two NT books were trying to convince Roman authorities that followers of Jesus would not be a threat to their empire.

Wrap your mind around that.

Regardless, what we are looking at is a scene with the apostle Paul, one of the new followers of Jesus of Nazareth, addressing a crowd of people in Greece. Things to note about the people in Greece: apparently, they were “religious,” so says Paul. What does that mean to you? Also, they had objects of worship, altars, with an inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.

The author of Luke [via Paul’s words] then challenged those who listened. The challenge was to shift the Greek’s thinking that God was distant and lived in religious temples to a mindset that God was present and gave life to everything and everyone. The point of this speech, in this context, was to encourage the listeners to become seekers of God, expecting to find God near to them, realizing that God was not far away. And then the author of Luke throws in, for good measure, a quote from a Cretan philosopher called Epimenides: For in God we live and move and have our being. And a quote from Cilician Stoic Aratus: We are God’s children. It’s almost as if Luke and Act’s author is pulling out all the stops.

Rightly so. Fast forward from the 2nd century to this century and what has changed in terms of our view of the divine? The status-quo mindset of religious institutions and people still is that “God is so big, far away, so powerful, that God has no business being present in our day to day lives.” Why would God care about our problems, our suffering, our joys, our challenges? And God is stuck in history. This, in my opinion, is why people are still prejudice against LGBT people, those of other nationalities, cultures, and religions, because God is stuck in the past.

And while I appreciate amazing architecture [including religious structures], and also embrace the mysticism of religions that view God with awe, I argue that many times we project God onto those massive religious structures constructed with gold and other precious elements [often built by slaves]; and, many people who view God with awe as some distant force have a lot of trouble dealing with hardship and setbacks in their own lives, as they continually wait for the distant God to act or as they think that they have committed some sin and therefore are being punished.

So I wonder in this moment, if it is possible for you, can we put aside the grand structures of religion, the awe-inspiring histories, the belief systems that have lasted for centuries, and the idea that the divine is so far away and unknown?

Is it possible for you today, whatever your background, to refer to the divine not as lord but as friend?

What would it mean for you to look at God not as a Lord [with you as subject] but instead the divine friend, who relates to you out of love?

Allow me to share the thoughts of Abu’l-Hasan Kharaqani, a Muslim mystic, a person one could call a mentor to the famous poet Rumi. Kharaqani was a Persian Muslim who experienced much hardship in his life before passing away in 1033. But for him, a relationship with God was a mutual seeking of friendship. In other words, God is seeking us just as we are seeking God.

Kharaqani wrote:

One night I saw God Almighty in a dream. I said to God: “It’s been sixty years that I have spent in the hope of being your friend, of desiring you.”

Also, for Kharaqani, being a friend of God meant being a friend to humanity, regardless of race, creed, background, etc.

See, this is where I’m at today. I have no interest in maintaining a religious institution [called church] that proclaims a big, powerful, distant God, and then uses that to control people and harbor material wealth and ignore the marginalized. What rings true for me is the idea that the Divine is seeking us, and we are seeking the Divine. When we search and seek, we find. We find and discover that we are still breathing—even when the world knocks us down and threatens to take our breath away. It is encouraging to me, and I hope to you, that the One who created and keeps creating doesn’t have to be Lord, doesn’t have to be distant, doesn’t have to live in a religious temple, doesn’t even have to live in a religion! Whoever seeks and searches for the divine, whoever loves the stranger and feeds them in whatever context—will find joy in being a friend of God, and wholeness in being a friend to anyone they encounter. May it be so.

When I was a teenager, there was a song that I learned in a youth ministry program that stuck in my head. The song Draw Me Close by Kelly Robert Carpenter spoke to me on an emotional level.

Draw me close to you
Never let me go
I lay it all down again
To hear you say that I’m your friend

In college, I encountered other songs. My church was Mt. Zion Baptistin Sioux City, Iowa. At Mt. Zion, music was one big emotional ball of cathartic energy. People cried, shouted, danced, laughed, applauded, and sang like their lungs might explode in five seconds. I loved it.

O what fellowship, o what joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms…I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free…what a friend we have in Jesus…

Take a listen…..

I felt that at Mt. Zion, no one cared what kind of emotional response you had to the music. Everyone had space to express themselves as they wished. If you wanted to be quiet, you could, but your neighbor just might be shouting and dancing next to you. Even the minister, while he was preaching, if he detected a tired atmosphere in the congregation, that people were bored or at least ready for lunch to begin, he’d start singing. And then the choir would join in. And then we joined. And we were back. And before we knew it, lunch was served.

Then, in graduate school. I started interning in churches. For the first time, I encountered a lot of people who participated regularly in church activities and worship, and who claimed to be Christians, but who did not care for songs like Draw Me Close or the gospel songs of Mt. Zion. In fact, I discovered early on in my professional vocation as a music and worship leader that this opposition was strong and loud.

Even church musicians and pastors didn’t want to sing these songs because, according to them, they were too emotionally-charged.

At first, I got defensive and didn’t know how to respond. But the more I researched the history of music used in services of worship [not just in Christianity, but in other religions, too]—I discovered that their argument was a reaction to changes they didn’t like. You see, music has been and always will be, emotionally-charged.

If a song doesn’t move you in some way, you don’t really remember it.

Some people, for example, claim that their hair stands up on the back of their neck when they hear certain symphonies of Mozart. Others fall into a rhythmic trance when they listen to particular hip hop songs. Still others are mesmerized by pop choruses; and some cannot get enough of the twang of country music or the hard-driving guitars and drums of heavy metal.

The fact is, music is emotional.

Now I fully admit that some songs are cheesy and annoyingly repetitive—in every genre. But our reaction to types of music is based on our social conditioning and our tastes. And so, one song that brings about a great emotional response in someone may not do the same for another person.

In spite of this, much of the Western Christian church [specifically mainline denominations with European heritage] continues to say that emotional songs are inferior to say, songs in the Reformed tradition that require an organ and were written during a certain time period and, according to them, are reverent songs that fit into 4-5 stanzas.

Again—don’t get me wrong. Reverence certainly has its place—in music, prayer, etc. I’ve been to prayer services at Sikh Gurdwaras, for example, and the songs they sing [based on their scriptures], certainly exhibit reverence for the divine presence. At the same time, though, emotion is involved. The divine is not aloof and far off, but here, in this moment, in relationship with all humankind. They use different instruments and vocal styles to reflect that. Consider also that I’ve participated in Hindu songs and prayers that follow meditative moments and then break out into celebratory clapping with cymbals. And I’ve been to plenty of live, secular music concerts during which people broke down in tears or looked like they were at Mt. Zion the way they danced and joyfully sang along.

Music, regardless of religious background, is often a bridge for us to see that humanity and the divine are connected.

That brings me to this saying in John’s Gospel, a continuation of the vine and branches metaphor. Jesus has just finished describing the beautifully-connected relationship between vinegrower, vine, and branches. Now, Jesus gives a simple command: love one another as I have loved you. And then this: no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

But we need to know that laying one’s life down is not about dying. I have heard this phrase misquoted to explain why missionaries die in other countries or why Iraqi or Kenyan Christians are killed or why women and men of the military die at war.

I think this shows great disrespect—both to those who die, but also to those who are living. In John, Jesus doesn’t ask people to die for a religion.

If we say that and believe that, we are no different than any religious fanatics in the U.S. or around the world who hide behind religion in order to commit violent acts.

No, Jesus says, in the Greek, lay down one’s psuche. Psuche is roughly translated into English as breath, life-being, or soul. Apply that to the phrase and here are some possibilities:

lay down (or set aside) your heart

lay down your mind

lay down your soul

lay down your being

Keep in mind that Jesus of Nazareth and the writers of John’s Gospel were all influenced by Eastern philosophy. Psuche is a holistic word to represent our humanity—including our ego.

Ego means “I” in Eastern philosophy. It is the the named self, self-consciousness of self-recognition.

But ego also can distract us from simply knowing our own selves, i.e. being present in this very moment, and then knowing the people around us.

Jesus’ teachings, and many of the teachings of the apostle Paul, were about the spiritual goal of attaining self-knowledge of one’s own true nature to become experienced and enacted in the world. Some called this enlightenment [like John’s Gospel] and others called this salvation.

Simply put—it’s about knowing yourself fully, as you are.

Keeping this in mind helps us to better understand the meaning behind these Jesus words of laying down one’s life for one’s friends. We are commanded to love each other in a better way, and this love involves knowing ourselves in the present moment, and knowing those around us. It means setting aside that which would prevent us from truly loving others as they are.

The vinegrower God is a relatable divine presence. Jesus called his followers friends. The command here is not to be religious or to believe certain things; the command is to love in a certain way.

Consider Lean on Me and the great Bill Withers:

Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
If there is a load you have to bear That you can’t carry
I’m right up the road, I’ll share your load
If you just call me

We all have loads that we carry in life, and our pride can get in the way of admitting how we feel in the present moment.

We’re meant to lighten our own loads, and the loads of others.

This is how God is a friend. God is not meant to be heavy at all. Jesus, a good friend, said if your load is heavy, come to me, and I’ll give you rest, because my load is light.

This is how much we are loved.

And this is how we are supposed to love others.

It is possible—it really is—to meet people where they are and as they are. If we push aside our pride and the things that distract us, we can become aware of your own prejudices or any other obstacles that keep us from loving others.

Can you accept it?

The divine is a friend.

That’s music to the ears!

Embrace friendship with your Creator; see and accept yourself as you are, in this moment; seek out and nurture divine friendship with your brothers and sisters of the world.